Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Captain Cook sighted the peninsula in 1770. He named it after naturalist Sir Joseph
Banks. Close European contact began in the 1820s, when traders arrived searching for
dressed flax, which was used to make sails and rope. In 1836 the British established a whal-
ing station at Peraki.
Two years later French captain Jean Langlois chose the attractive site of Akaroa as a
likely spot for French settlement. In 1840 a group of 63 French and six German colonists set
out from Rochefort, France, for NZ in the
Comte de Paris
. In 1849 the French land claim
was sold to the New Zealand Company and the following year the French were joined by a
large group of British settlers. However, the small group of French colonists clearly stamped
their mark on this place.
Environment
Banks Peninsula is composed of the remnants of huge twin volcanoes, now attached to the
South Island mainland by gravel pushed down from the eroding Southern Alps. It is be-
lieved to have once been an island, and was surrounded by a 15km band of swamps and
reeds only 150 years ago.
The Lyttelton volcano was already extinct when the Akaroa volcano began to erupt
around nine million years ago. Both volcanoes were once much higher; Akaroa is estimated
to have peaked at around 1370m. During ice ages, when the sea level was considerably
lower, valleys were gouged on the slopes of the volcanoes. When the sea rose, the valleys
drowned and the peninsula took its present form, with rugged sea cliffs and skylines studded
with basalt plugs.
Once heavily forested, the land has been cleared for timber and farming, making this one
of the few areas where trampers pass through paddocks filled with grazing sheep. There is,
however, plenty of interesting wildlife to be seen, such as penguins, fur seals and Hector's
dolphins. In four days of tramping you could possibly see all three.
Birds of the bush include riflemen, bellbirds, kereru, fantails, tomtits and paradise shel-
ducks. Shore and sea birds are prolific, and include spotted shags, little shags, gulls, terns,
oystercatchers, sooty shearwaters and petrels.
8
Planning
WHEN TO TRAMP
